


we cannot falter now

by Dialux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, POV Female Character, TOO MANY I SAY, let's see how many characters are gonna get introduced to this story over the next chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 05:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10269281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: Natasha had the knives in her fists and the steel in her spine and nothing, not an ounce, not an iota more.Some mornings, it felt like enough. And on others it felt like nothing. On the worst, it felt like something stolen, this righteousness, this belief; on the worst, it felt like she might crumble under the weight of her sins.But she hadn’t yet. And she wouldn’t: not until she’d paid what she could. Her death would mean something, even if her life meant nothing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I... don't even know? Where this came from? But I do, actually, know where this is going; just have no clue when that's going to be written. So. Enjoy, I suppose!

**Prologue:**

_The nobleman walks into his study. He is sweaty, his rich silk overcoat sticky with it. Moonlight puddles through the bay windows on the side like so much milk._

_He is shaking. His left hand trembles, fat jiggling over the bones; the other one scrambles through the papers on his desk frantically. He grabs a folder and turns around-_

_-the door snicks closed._

_A young woman steps forward, skin pale in the thin light. Her eyes are large and the hollows under her cheeks glitter an unearthly black. She looks like a grim reaper, like a fallen angel; the nobleman stumbles backwards against the wooden desk and opens his mouth in a horrified, silent howl._

_“Let me go,” whispers the nobleman. “I know why you are here, I can double what they’ve paid you! I don’t- I have a wife! I have-“_

_“You have nothing,” says the woman, even and flat. “’Death lays his hands on Kings and Peasants alike.’ And you, Lord Kensworth, will face death without the luxury of the gift that has been given to you, unasked, in life: wealth. May you have courage as you approach oblivion.”_

_“No!” screams Kensworth. “No, I- I- I-“_

_The woman steps forward, and as she does the black cloak she wears falls away; a silver blade shines against her side. In one swift movement, almost too fast to be seen, she strikes. Blood spatters over the tile floor._

_The curtains flutter a moment later. The room is empty._

_A man lies dead on the floor._

_They will never find his killer._

…

**Five Years Later:**

A person walked into the bar, slinking along the edges to the scarred table in the back corner. They wore a dark cloak, hood up; little silver droplets were caught along the seams.

Slim body, cloak shredded along one seam with thin thorns, a hint of a flash across the knuckles. Clint noticed it all within seconds- the habits of a lifetime were not easily broken. _Danger,_ screamed a primal part of him. But there was something strangely familiar about him, wasn’t there? Something in the set of the shoulders, the twist of the spine-

He moved between the tables easily, telegraphing the lack of weapons under his clothes. They got all kinds in inns, particularly in out-of-the-way ones this far from a major city. Clint had learned to identify troublemakers and thugs and just plain people with an experienced eye.

“How are you doing, Natasha?” He asked, stepping in front of her.

Natasha Romanoff- previously, Natalia Romanova- looked up at him and smiled. It looked sharp enough to take off someone’s head, all teeth and enamel, jewel-hard and angry. The smile was hard-edged, and strange for another reason entirely: the dark red hair he was used to seeing was replaced with blonde, lighter than his own.

Clint winced inwardly. Discounting the strange hair, she was still- brittle. He’d seen this before, and knew it intimately- on both sides. And this kind of sharp edges meant she was just back from a mission, likely just this day. Not debriefed, not decompressed. Wary of strangers and in a frame of mind of _kill or be killed_.

For a moment, he wondered if it was okay for all these civilians to be this close to her, but then Natasha always had a good handle on basic safety measures and her own triggers. If she wasn’t safe to be around, then she wouldn’t have put herself here.

“Good,” she said, and tipped her head to the side lazily. Green eyes glittered under a blonde fringe. “How’s the inn?”

Clint shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back easily. “Doing well,” he said, lifting a shoulder. “As you can see.”

“Mmm. Got any room for an assassin under your roof?” It was said playfully, but with a dark undertone.

“As long as they don’t bring the work home,” said Clint. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. Natasha- assassin?”

It was her turn to look like she regretted her words. “Yes. Well, slightly. It’s a- long story.”

“Your told me you were out!” Clint exclaimed.

Natasha leaned back slowly. “To be perfectly accurate, I told you that I could take care of myself.”

_“Natasha-”_

“I meant it when I called it a long story, Barton,” said Natasha. She glanced down at herself. “I won’t promise a reason, but I think I have it in me to give an explanation.”

“Natasha.”

“May I borrow your bath?”

Clint bit back his words and nodded, once, sharply. He pretended not to see the slight slump in her shoulders, or the way her usually-fluid movement was marred by a limp on her right side. He scrubbed a hand over his face and walked back to the bar.

…

Natasha walked up the stairs, and resisted the urge to run her thumbs over the smooth wooden banister. Barton’s inn was a large one, well-lit, and clean; but the lack of luxury was obvious, especially after five months in the Southern Isles.

There was a stash of clothes and weaponry in a broom closet that she’d put when Barton had told her he was getting out. She picked up a change of clothes and a few stilettos, and headed down the stairs to the steam room. Inside, she was glad for the privacy; she’d just returned from a month-long black-op that involved too many bombed ships for her emotional well-being, not to mention physical.

It was three days’ distant on horseback, if one rode fast.

Natasha had, and the dust of travel was still engraved into her skin. She had bruises across her lower legs, scrapes and cuts across her back, a shallow knife wound running down her chest that burned like Thor’s own lightning when she poured water on it.

Cleaned up, she toweled off her hair. She’d almost left the room when she paused, and returned. Quickly, she strapped three knives across her body and shrugged on a loose shawl that could hide the bulges easily. Then she turned on her heel sharply and went downstairs.

Natasha owed Clint a lot. The truth was the least of those things.

Sliding into a barstool, she watched him closely. He looked older, but softer; civilian life suited him. Natasha’d tried it back when she still thought it could work, and in less than a week she’d felt a nameless itch across her shoulders. She wasn’t made for anything outside of assassinations, it seemed.

“Barton,” she called.

He turned, slightly, and arched a brow. “What does a girl have to do to get a beer around here?” She asked flirtatiously, leaning forward over the wooden bar.

His lips quirked. “Give me what I want.” After a beat, he paused, and frowned. “That sounded a lot better in my head.”

Natasha laughed. She took the beer he offered and sipped; it was light and earthy. Very different from the darker, almost-chocalatey tones favored by the Southerners. “Nice beer.”

“Imported,” said Clint. “There’s a new provider, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him? Goes by Bishop.”

“I was out of the country for five months, Barton,” said Natasha dryly. “And I’ve never been a beer connoisseur.”

“Isn’t that a- you told me the word, I know you did, something to do with idiots?”

“Oxymoronic?”

Clint snapped his fingers. “That’s the one!”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Two years and still an idiot.”

Someone called him from the back, and Clint left. When he came back, he looked more serious. “So. Assassin?”

“Yes,” sighed Natasha. “And no.”

“Well, one of those is correct.”

“Fuck off.” She slumped back. “I’m out of the Guild.”

“But, still doing work for them.”

“Little things.”

He leaned forward. “Five months isn’t _little.”_

“It might be easy to leave the Guild, Barton,” said Natasha, quietly. “But Nick Fury’s another story altogether.”

“ _Nick?”_ Asked Clint, looking startled. “Nat- this isn’t… Nick’s the head of the Assassin’s Guild. I mean, what’s going on? Why would he even want to do that?”

 _Shit,_ thought Natasha. It was easy to forget that Clint was brilliant; he hid it behind a veneer of bumbling ignorance. And he had never been completely satisfied with the Guild’s policy of compartmentalization.

“He’s a good man,” she said, instead of anything else.

Clint rolled his eyes. “I know _that,_ Nat. But- I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.” He shrugged deprecatingly. “Call me protective.”

“I’d never insult you like that,” said Natasha, dryly, and he laughed. It lit a small fire in her gut, and she thought she would treasure these moments forever; she’d never be content without a knife in her boots and a mission weighting her shoulders, maybe, but without Clint she didn’t know if she’d even be _human,_ so there was that.

He nodded at the kitchen door and said, “I’ll get started on that dinner of yours,” and left.

Natasha exhaled softly, just a little puff of air, and leaned her head on her forearm, the edge of her forehead in contact with the chill of the beer glass. She felt weightless and empty for a moment; like she was unmoored and fragile for it.

“New to town?”

She startled; the beer tipped back when she flinched upright. She thought the man who’d spoken was talking to someone else, but he wasn’t- he was staring straight at her. Briefly, Natasha mourned the loss of good beer and then addressed him.

“Something like that.” Sharp, skirting the edge of rudeness.

The man who’d spoken was tall, well-built; rugged features that brought to mind Clint. Except Clint had never looked at her like that, all proprietary, oozing arrogance. Natasha felt the stirrings of annoyance and made sure her face was without expression as he looked her over.

“Well,” said the man, “the Mountains have always needed fresh blood.”

Natasha closed her eyes. She had fresh blood, certainly, but it was the blood of people she’d killed, not her own. Somedays she felt ancient, when she looked at this land; dried and shrivelled and exhausted. She had killed and killed and killed, for Ivan and then Nick and now, now she did it for those with money. The man could not know what he had said. But it did not stop the deep, burning fury rising, either.

“Trouble?” asked Clint, stepping out of the kitchen. It took him less than a second to notice that something was wrong; he stepped between the two of them and addressed the man: “You ordered the lamb chops, didn’t you? Sorry about the long wait-”

She tuned him out and was half-turning away when a flash of something crossed her peripheral vision. The man hadn’t moved when speaking to Natasha, and she hadn’t been paying attention when he had moved towards her. But now, in the slide of his hand across his waist, in the slight hitch of his gait shifting towards the left, she saw something terrifying. She saw something similar to-

Adrenaline flooded her veins, and her focus widened, from him to the entire room: it was almost empty, and those left were ignoring the brewing confrontation at the bar far too studiously. Her eyes narrowed and she spun back, smiling tensely at Clint’s back. He was still between them, close enough to be stabbed if the man was quick with his sword.

“Captain,” called Natasha, making a split-second decision.

The man’s shoulders twitched, unconsciously; if she hadn’t been watching so closely she wouldn’t have seen it. But she had: she had seen the man respond to his title.

And the man was reacting- he saw her response, and was drawing his sword, and _Clint was close enough to be stabbed._

“Get down,” she snarled, and trusted Clint to do just that; she vaulted forwards, placed both hands on his shoulders as a springboard, and used both her momentum and his to flip forwards, kicking him in the face. She shoved Clint backwards as she did so, and a moment later she heard the flap of the kitchen doors opening and closing. But then her focus was on the man again; she took a shallow cut across her forearm when the sword he’d already unsheathed slipped from his grasp at her kick.

Natasha landed, lightly, on the balls of her feet, and waited. She was grimly aware of the distinct lack of weapons on her body.

“What do you want?” She asked coldly. When he didn’t answer, she stepped forward and pressed, hard, pinning the thin skin across his biceps to the ground. “ _What do you want?”_

He yelled, once, loudly. And then, panting: “Nothing I want darling. Just the tool for a better man.” He spat blood off to the side. “Nothing personal.”

His voice had gone breathy with pain, the _g’s_ fading, the vowels lengthening, the careful highborn accent turning into the language of the capital’s slums.

Natasha might have continued the interrogation, but the other men in the bar were moving towards her; one had gotten close enough that she could grab his outstretched wrist, push it backwards, and then flip him over her head, bringing him crashing down on the first man’s head.

He’d tried to rise, but the weight of his accomplice forced him down again. Natasha shifted, punched the man in the throat, and drew two knives, all in one smooth motion.

“If you wanted to kill me,” she said, “you should have brought more men.”

Two more men came towards her, and she leapt forwards. Balanced her foot on the edge of a table; bent her knee and used the force from that to thrust one man into another. She landed on her back, and came up hard- she buried her knife in the first man’s chest, and swung around to cut the throat of the second.

The entire process took less than ten seconds.

Three men in the back, and Natasha advanced towards them, only a prickle across her spine stopped her- and then, she tasted rosemary across the back of her throat, heavy and cloying.

 _Magic._ She resisted the urge to curse. Most people had a base understanding of magic, and if strong enough could feel something. Natasha was, while no stronger than the average person, well-trained. To her, magic tasted like summer rosemary and electricity.

The wizard held a glowing ball in his hands, and Natasha had little choice; she threw a bloodied knife into the chest of one man and shoved the table forwards, so that it slammed into the wizard’s sternum.

He was well-trained, though. The magic ball faded in intensity but remained in his hands.

Natasha saw the wizard glance up, dark skin lit up unholy white, and she knew, almost instantly, that he would throw it. He shifted forwards, hands rising, and she ducked; threw herself under a table.

The light grew brighter, grew blinding. Natasha closed her eyes, and so she didn’t see what happened. She only knew a great cracking sound above her head, and then a sharp pain across her leg and head, and then: nothing.

…

Natasha awoke to a throbbing in her head, and a dull ache across her left leg. She grimaced angrily as she rose- the world spun in almost dizzying fashion, and she was fairly certain that she was bleeding across her temple.

The wizard was lying not five feet from her. She limped forwards and knelt, searching for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Judging by the faintly smoking remnants of his clothes, he had not had the training to hold the magic ball together for long enough to aim it, and it had backfired on him, spectacularly.

But even if the wizard was dead, there had been two men with him, and they were nowhere to be seen. Natasha breathed out sharply, between gritted teeth, and glanced around. She picked up a broken-off chair leg and, using strips of cloth, bound it to her leg. It was a crude method perhaps, but one that would certainly serve its purpose; she could walk.

When she entered the inn, it had been drizzling. Now, it _poured;_ within moments of stepping outside her clothes were plastered to her skin. She wasn’t halfway to the stables when she heard someone shout something.

Natasha whirled around and saw a man there, one of the wizard’s lackeys. She looked around for cover, and was in the process of deciding, when she saw the man get shot.

The cold rain stuck to her skin. As the man fell, she saw another man in the background, not twenty yards distant. He held a crossbow.

Natasha went rigid.

He held the crossbow easily, relaxed. The point didn’t waver, and Natasha had no illusions on his ability to shoot her the moment she attempted to move. He continued to move forwards, until she could see his face easily- smooth cheeks, grey eyes, pale skin; he looked so _young._ He hadn’t been inside the inn.

“What do you want?” She asked quietly, and she could barely hear herself over the rainfall.

The man’s eyes remained calm, and he smiled coldly. “It is so easy to forget what wrongs you have done, is it not? No matter. What was it Ivan trained you to say? _May you have courage as you approach oblivion.”_

“Ivan,” mouthed Natasha, and felt a great weight crash down on her shoulders.

She moved almost as soon as she had processed, and it was faster than even this man had imagined. His crossbow went through her shoulder, but it missed her neck. Natasha had a long history of being better than other people ever dreamed- they saw her long fingers, long neck, long hair; they saw a woman, and immediately thought her slow or weak or _less._

She did not scream when the bolt pierced her shoulder, and instead rolled to the side, dropping to her knees. The knife she kept in her jacket she flung out, into the flesh of his calf, and then threw her last knife straight into the hand that held the crossbow.

Then Natasha leapt forward, yanked the knife out of his calf, hooked a knee over his buckling chest and flipped him over. As he lay there, she pressed the bloodied knife into his neck.

“Ivan is _dead,”_ snarled Natasha, and leaned close, lips against his ear. “I know. I _broke his neck and burned his body.”_

“You’d think that should kill him,” said the man, and Natasha forced the knife tighter; made him choke. “Go ahead. Kill me. I think-”

“May you have courage as you approach oblivion,” she said abruptly, and cut through his jugular.

The blood spilled out over her hands, hot and pulsing, and Natasha stepped away quickly. The rain had gone heavier, and felt like blows against the tops of her shoulders and scalp; suddenly, she just felt tired.

There was a crossbow bolt sticking out of her shoulder that was becoming quite painful- the adrenaline surge was dropping. Natasha gritted her teeth and stamped into the stables. She gripped the part of the bolt that had come out through her shoulder, and snapped it off: it took two tries, through the pain, and she was panting by the end of it, and her shirt was definitely ruined with all the blood she’d spilled.

She heard a noise across the stable. There was an axe over the door, and she hefted it with her left hand- it would be painful, perhaps, to wield; but it would get the job done. She stood by the door and waited, grimly, for the shadow to darken the doorstep.

But the man who entered wielded a bow and arrows; his face was a familiar oval, and his features were comfortingly rugged.

Natasha dropped the axe and leaned against the wall, staggering a little: there was a scrape along her temple, a splint bolstering her leg, a shallow, painful cut across her forearm, and a bloody hole through her shoulder.

Clint saw her, and his expression turned suddenly alarmed; he tossed his bow aside and muscled himself around her so she had one arm around his neck and most of her weight on him, and slowly, lurching, led her down so she was supported by the wall and the floor.

“You have that special alcohol you were talking about?” She asked.

“Yeah, it’s just over here,” he said quietly, walked over to the far end of the stable, opened a spigot into a smooth-woven basket and handed it back to her.

Natasha breathed once, through the pain, and said, “You need to clean out the wounds, Barton.”

There was a reason why Clint was the best- he barely hesitated, when it came time to do the job; just soaked a part of his shirt and pressed it to her forearm. Natasha inhaled, sharply, and dug her fingers into the softened wood floor.

He cleaned up neatly, if quickly; made sure no threads were caught in her wounds and tied off a bandage to wrap her shoulder with a steady hand. Then he handed her the beer, and Natasha accepted gratefully. It burned down her throat and through her veins, numbing the pain.

Natasha had accelerated healing, and she needed it- anyone else with this amount of blood loss would have been lucky to survive.

“What the fuck happened to you?” asked Clint.

Natasha bit her lip. “You remember Ivan, yeah?”

“Petrovich?” He paused. “Crazy, perverted bastard with crazier hair? Yeah, I remember.” He frowned. “Didn’t you kill him?”

“Yes,” said Natasha.

“Huh.”

“What were you doing?” She asked. When he glanced up, quizzically, she rolled her eyes. “I was kicking ass inside, and you disappeared. What were you doing?”

“I went to get my bow,” said Clint. He took the basket of alcohol from her. “And when I got back, it was raining. I got one man, who was running, and then began doing a grid-search. The barn was one of the last places I looked.”

 _A man?_ Natasha thought, and then: _There were two who were with the wizard._

“Why are you worried about Petrovich if you killed him?”

“Because he had friends; and his friends had friends,” Natasha said, slowly, working it out as she spoke. “They were all very well-connected, Barton, you know that. I had it out with the men in the inn- someone must be very powerful to have arranged so many well-trained men so quickly.”

“Not good enough to take you, though.”

“No,” she agreed. “But they came close. Closer than I’d have liked.”

He swallowed. “What do you want to do?”

Natasha frowned. “I’ll head to the city. Talk to Fury- see if he knows anything.” It would be easy enough to get what she needed, but instinct said there was something more here than just a high-ranking individual who disliked her.

“Anything you want from me?”

She looked at him guiltily, at that. She’d headed to Clint’s inn for a hot meal and a nice bed, and brought down a past he’d retired from on his head. It was easy to lose herself in the cold anger and desire for vengeance, but Clint deserved better from her.

“You’ll have to burn the inn,” she said, and he grimaced; but nodded. “Head out to the hills, I suppose. Keep a low profile. If anything happens I’ll let you know.”

He leaned back, letting his legs unfold and head thump back against the wall, mirroring her own pose. “Been meaning to visit the High Falls for years, you know.”

Natasha half-lifted her left hand, felt her face twist with pain at the ache. “I’m sorry,” she said, injecting as much regret into her voice as she could into those three syllables.

Clint shrugged and rose to his feet, half-smiling. “I got out, Nat. I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to, not anymore.”

Natasha nodded, and then she rose as well; the world spun dizzily for a long moment but it passed, and she sent him a wan smile.

“Got a horse?”

There was a reason why Natasha had worked with Clint for a longer time than anyone else. He didn’t coddle her, and he didn’t pressure her, and he knew, intimately, how it felt to be underestimated and hated by everyone around you. He quirked his lips and saddled one of the horses and when she had pulled a heavy blanket around her shoulders- belted at the neck and waist to mimic a cloak- he tightened his hand around her wrist.

“Be safe,” he said.

“I always come back,” said Natasha, and dug her feet into the flanks of the horse.

…

The next morning, in the Arboreal Gardens of the Capital of the Kingdom of the Western Mountains, a young widow entered. She entered at the middle of the crowd, and spent a long time in front of the Childhood Innocence statue off in the Left Wing; she left barely an hour later.

The widow wore a veil. No guards remembered her name, and not a single person saw her face.

Under black lace, a woman’s green eyes flashed with a smile.

…

That evening, in the inn across the street, a hooded man entered, bought a room, and headed upstairs without speaking to anyone. A moment later, a woman rose from a corner table and left upstairs; she, too, had not spoken to anyone.

She rapped, twice short and once long. There was a scraping sound, and then the man called, “I’ve not asked for any visitors.”

“But there are those who’ve asked for you,” the woman retorted, and the door swung open freely; the woman stepped forwards and met a blade to her neck. “I’ve not yet held a blade to your throat, Nick, though I believe I might start now.”

Nick Fury lowered the sword slowly, stepping out of the shadows. His black patch stood out starkly, in the flickering candlelight. He looked very grim.

“Interesting outfit,” he said neutrally.

Natasha glanced down at her gown: a narrow, black confection; its only decoration a gossamer fringe at the base. She’d paired it with a dark grey shawl and a hat veil that was dramatic enough to draw attention to the cut of her jaw, and not the look in her eye. There were seven knives hidden across her body, and garroting strings in the seams of her shawl. There was an undetectable poison in her hat.

“Nobody looks too hard at those they pity,” she murmured, and swept forward; reached out and lit another two candles. “Anyhow. What took you so long?” She turned back and arched a brow.

Nick looked irritated, a little, but that was his default expression. “You were supposed to report in this morning. Contrary to your expectations, I actually have more important things to deal with than you.”

“More important than me?” Natasha asked sharply. “I tend to take people killing me seriously!”

“You’re an assassin,” said Fury incredulously.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “I came back last night. Hill told me to take the night off; nobody could debrief me just then. So I headed out to Barton’s inn- off the north road?- and while I was there, ten men ambushed me, and Barton. I have a hole in my shoulder and a damned sprained ankle, Nick, and that’s after a wizard came after me with enough training to hold onto a magic _bomb_ while getting a table slammed into him. So if you tell me that you had more _important things to deal with,_ I’m going to have to say tough luck!”

Fury went still. He looked- wrong-footed.

“Where’s Barton’s inn?”

“Not five leagues from the city.”

She waited, hands tensed, and Nick watched her with those all-seeing eyes of his: Natasha’d never felt so frightened than when she’d returned from Ivan and sat across from him, staring into eyes that knew more of her sins than any other in all the kingdoms. He had not been cruel, even if she’d seen judgment in his eyes, and that was more than she could ever expect of them.

“I should have heard of it.”

“I _know,”_ Natasha snapped. “A couple hours at most, it’s too close for you not to have heard of a fire. But there’s no such report, and I want to know who’s hiding things from you. Who can, and who will.”

“Those assassins weren’t mine,” he said wearily.

“They were captains in the Guard,” she said. “The Guard that answers only to the King. I don’t know why he wants me dead, Nick, but he wanted it done badly: they had slice bombs. They’re using brute force, and that tells me that he’s either not worried about collateral damage, or he’s not worried about the _consequences_ of collateral damage.” She purposely didn’t twitch. “Which means…”

“I’m not in danger.”

“Are you sure?” She asked. “Because Alexander II Justsighted might be King, but every man, woman, and child knows who the Kingmaker is. And everyone knows that those who build kings can tear them down.”

He sighed. “You know the consequences of accusing the King of murder?”

“You were the one who swore him in with _no man is above the law_ hanging over his head.” She rolled her eyes after a moment. “But, no; I’m not an idiot. I work from the shadows, I know how to get information. But if this is true- it goes deep. In the Guild, in the country. I can take care of myself, Nick, but I’ll need some more collateral to accomplish anything.” She paused for a moment. “I’m asking you for that.”

“I’ll look,” said Fury. “But you’re just back from a mission. Anything critical?”

“No.” Natasha frowned. “Which is why I’m- worried. I’ll see if I missed anything, too. Let’s talk tomorrow- the South Market at noon’s a good place.”

He inclined his head. “Crowded, loud; we can get lost in the people. Bring a disguise. We don’t know how many are tailing me right now.”

“I’m not an _amateur,”_ Natasha said, and rose gracefully, and left.

…

Natasha headed to a small attic room in a sturdy building, close to the affluent parts of town if not actually in them.

She had two safe houses in the city, and a dozen favors she could call in if necessary. But one of those safe houses was far into the distant reaches of the slummier parts of the city, and was more pit stop than anything. And if she wanted to truly stay off the radar, she could not rely on anyone- not when she had no idea how far the conspiracy went.

So to the attic it was.

It had been fortuitous that she’d found it, for certain. The building was old, and designed over three centuries previous; during that time, false ceilings had been all the rage. Over the years, however, the false ceiling was all but forgotten. The attic was boarded up from the inside.

Natasha had noticed a window where there shouldn’t have been one. She had slipped onto the roof, found loose shingles, and cut a trapdoor out of the ceiling.

And, inside, there was a small table, inks- _dresses._ Someone had lived there, and had loved it very much. With a little bit of tailoring and cleaning, she had a treasure trove of gowns for use.

Inside, now, she began the tedious process of debriefing herself- writing down bits of information, arranging in chronological order, drawing conclusions. After an hour, she’d written down everything she could remember.

And there was nothing new to be found.

_What am I missing?_

A routine scam, set up by a pirate ship. These kidnapped people, though, instead of money. Took the people away, stranded them on an island with other pirates on it, and forced them to work. Meanwhile, the pirates extorted money from the family of the kidnapped. If they didn’t pay, the pirates got free labor.

Kidnapping was a tried-and-true method in the Southern Isles. This was on a larger scale, to be sure, but not unheard of. Before she’d blown up the pirate’s ship, the _Lemurian Star,_ she’d even visited the island- she’d seen backbreaking labor, but not anything honestly unheard of.

Hell, the whole reason she was there was because an Assassin had been kidnapped. Or extorted, Fury had never actually elaborated.

_Wait. The prisoner records-_

Yes, maybe that was it- not the pirates themselves, but the _prisoners-_ who were they?

And if the prisoners weren’t being used for just labor, and familial extortion, then why were _they_ kidnapped? Natasha could understand pirates being stupid enough to kidnap a nobleman, but an Assassin?

Assassins were dangerous, and everyone knew it.

So why kidnap an Assassin? What would make it that nice a concept, when everyone in the Peninsula knew that hurting an Assassin was grounds for total war, and one of the sides had centuries of experience in killing people? The pirates weren’t stupid.

No. They weren’t. But if they had protection- say, the guarantee of a King- then why would they hesitate?

Information. It was what everything boiled down to. More than money, more than loyalty- just information. Secrets. Blackmail. The things whispered in the streets, and shouted from mountain tops.

“Oh, _Thor_ ,” hissed Natasha.

The guarantee of a King would do very, very nicely. A King, or a powerful nobleman. And either was bad enough, but Alexander II was a dangerous man. If this was him-

No wonder she was in danger. Nobody liked loose ends, and Natasha knew exactly what the name of the man in charge of the pirates was. She knew exactly what the names of the prisoners were. She knew the location of the island, and though she’d been careful in keeping her identity secret, with the right information it wasn’t too much of a stretch that the King could identify her. It wasn’t anything of a surprise that he thought her a loose end, best killed before the information got out.

Batroc, the captain, could very well have been working with the King.

And the prisoners- she had thought them picked for their affluence, for their hardiness; but no- not Calhoun, he was an old man. Not Perryridge, who was a woman. Not a number of them.

But if they had information, if they had secrets, then why not? Why not kidnap and extort families and force them into backbreaking labor, _why not?_

The question it all boiled down to was who it benefited.

And Alexander II and his closest advisor, Arnim Zola, were certainly the ones who would benefit immediately from this.

 _Well,_ thought Natasha, _shit._

…

The next morning, Natasha dyed her hair a rough brown. It felt far more natural than the pale yellow it’d been before. She dressed in the fashion of the North: long, white dress belted in at the waist; colorful shawl; practical sandals. In the folds of her shawl she packed three knives, and four poisons, and some money. She burned the papers she’d painstakingly wrote last night.

Then she slipped out of the attic, and onto the streets. With her hair tied up, she looked like any girl in the city.

For four hours, she panned the market. There was nothing there, though. Natasha bought a hot basket of fries, and ate them in the shade of a market awning. The clink of women’s jewelry felt like a lullaby.

And then-

“I’ll take the jade,” Fury said behind her, talking to the vendor. “And the malachite.” He stepped away with a small brown package, and Natasha fell into step behind him.

“Any trouble?”

“Alex is hiding something,” he replied.

“We knew that already.”

“Not to this extent.” He drew alongside a silk shop and nodded to the vendor. “Couple months back I met this girl from the Taxmaster’s department. Seemed real nice, with a lip piercing, all purple hair- she told me all about the King signing off on Guild business. On Guild funding.”

“Shit,” said Natasha.

Fury stepped away, and slipped into a gap between two market awnings. He looked very serious, and very grim, when he spoke. “Alex signed off on executive orders that hired mercenaries, using Guild money. And he never told me.”

“That’s not the worst thing though, is it?” She asked quietly.

Fury snorted. “Like fucking _hell_ it is. Yesterday when I went looking for her she was nowhere to be found. Wasn’t even in the Guild’s records, Romanoff. You know, the confidential ones that require over a level six clearance to even _know about?”_

She twitched. “And level eight to access without questions being asked. Nick- who asked you to look into the _Lemurian Star?”_

Fury paused, and some emotion wrote itself across his face. Natasha- for some reason, without knowing, by chance- glanced up.

There was a flash of sunlight across the mud bricks of the nearby roof. A shift, and an angle; something that shouldn’t have been moving; against the wind.

“ _Get down!”_ Natasha barked, and shoved Fury away from her, deeper into the awning. Less than a heartbeat later, she heard the distinctive _thwack_ of a hardened arrow sinking into the ground. She spun into the stretched cloth to her left and, on the rebound, slipped a knife into her hand. She bounced back to the present position and calculated angles rapidly- it was a bad position for her to determine the attacker’s.

“Get out of here,” she ordered Fury, and unravelled her shawl, slashed the bottom of her dress to better aid in running. She didn’t pay attention to where he went- she was too busy analyzing the arrow.

Fire-hardened shaft, sharpened arrowhead, blunt feathering. Short distance, then, and vicious at that. There was a gooey substance on the arrowhead that was most likely a poison.

_For me, or for Fury?_

_Doesn’t matter._

Natasha scrambled up the awning, and gave chase.

The assassin was _fast._ They slid into areas that Natasha had trouble going into, and had an advantage in knowing what she looked like.

But that was with a shawl, and standing calmly. Two knives in hand, racing along the cloth-covered rooftops and clotheslines of the Southern Market was an entirely different proposition altogether.

And then- _then-_ Natasha saw them. A slight figure, draped in sandy cloth, on a lower clothesline than Natasha herself. For a moment, they turned and met her gaze, and when they saw her looking-

Natasha _ran._

It was fast, furious; a blow to her sternum and an elbow to the other’s throat. Natasha managed to flip her around, almost throwing the attacker off the slack rope they were on, but they gripped onto the rope with one hand, swung around, and attacked once more.

Except when they did, the wrap across their face fluttered away, and-

“I killed you,” Natasha whispered.

Yelena Belova, the only other survivor of Ivan Petrovitch’s experiments, stood before her, very much _alive._ She looked, in fact, much healthier than anytime that Natasha had never known her;

- _always pale, always thin, always sharp, clawing eyes and ripping lips, blood dripping and never stopping don’t stop never stop if you do-_

“You were never very good at anything you did,” said Yelena. Her eyes were a cold, icy blue.

“I wasn’t, was I.” It wasn’t a question.

Yelena smiled. She drew the crossbow out of its position in her belt, and pointed it off to the side. Her eyes held Natasha’s, still and soft and deadly.

“I will kill you with my own hands, Natalia,” she said, and fired. “Trust me, you will call it a mercy.”

Natasha turned her head, mapping the course, and watched in horror as it headed straight to the black-coated man she had tried to protect.

“Nick,” she whispered. Then she whirled around, but Yelena was- gone.

Natasha ran, sprinted; leapt down the buildings until she was there. Nick lay there, on the ground, arrow sticking out of his chest. It was not a fatal blow, but close enough; by the time they got him to safety, to doctors, he would be quite dead.

“Get out of my way,” panted Natasha. She knelt at his side, and took his limp wrist in hand.

It was strange, she thought- how fragile their bodies were. She had fashioned one into a weapon, but Fury’s weapon had been his mind, had been his secrets. It had not given him the protection he had thought it would.

“Why didn’t you _leave,_ you stupid, stupid man?”

A laugh burbled up out of blood-stained teeth. “Romanoff- _Natasha-_ listen to me. Haven’t got much time left. There’s- there’s a woman, an Assassin. Talk to her, a good woman. Good with swords, nothing fancy, plain. Name’s Sharon, hear me?” He exhaled. “Steve Rogers. She’s his bodyguard.”

His hand went slack.

Natasha rose, and felt something flicker across her spine: resolve, and a deadly anger. How dare anyone attempt to kill Nick in front of her? How dare anyone _succeed?_

 _You will not die in vain,_ she promised Nick’s corpse, and disappeared into the growing crowd.

…

Sharon Carter was tired.

It had been a long day indeed- Fury had died, and Hill had placed all high-level personnel on duty for the foreseeable future. As the head of a foreign diplomat’s security detail, Sharon had enough responsibility without being personally present to guard a closed door.

She slumped home, slammed the door shut. It was a small house, large for a single person but crowded for two. There were dishes crowded in the sink and clothes tossed over her bed. It smelled musty.

“Sharon Carter,” a woman said.

Sharon might have been tired, but she wasn’t _stupid._ Her sword was unsheathed, levelled straight at the shadowy figure.

Slowly, the person lit a match. The candle beside the armchair lit up, showing dark hair and an oval face-

“Natasha Romanoff,” said Sharon. “What a pleasure.”

Romanoff smiled thinly. “Sharon- may I call you that?”

“I prefer Carter.”

“Agent Carter,” said Romanoff, “let’s be perfectly clear with each other. I’ve no time for lies, and misdirection. Fury is dead, and I’ve no idea how many more are in the crosshairs of those who killed him. I need information, and I need it fast.”

“Fury is dead,” replied Sharon. “And everyone thinks you did it.”

 _“Please,”_ scoffed Romanoff. She leaned back in the chair. The dim light did no favors for Sharon- she could hardly read Romanoff in the best of conditions. Now, it was damn near impossible. “As if I’d do something so hamfisted. No- listen to me, Carter. Fury’s _dead,_ and the Guild’s in danger. I was there when he died. You know what his last words were? To talk to _you_.”

Sharon blinked. “Why me?”

“You know, I was wondering the same thing.” Romanoff pursed her lips, and shifted, sinuous as a cat. “You’re an average flyer in the Academy. Your records are pretty sparse, unless you start digging deep. It took me almost a full afternoon to get the data, and that’s longer than it’s taken me since I was- ten.”

“What?” Sharon asked, and it was quiet, was deadly.

Romanoff tipped her head to the side. “Let me tell you a story, Sharon Carter.”

“I think I’ve heard this.”

“Maybe not.” Romanoff nodded at the sword. “Put it down. There’s no reason to keep it up; if I wanted you dead I would’ve killed you long before you knew I was coming.”

Sharon relaxed slightly.

“Alright then. So. Decades past, the Kingdoms of the Western Mountains and Eastern Plains were warring. Men died, as they were wont to do. And borders were drawn and re-drawn as the battles dictated.” She paused. “Sounds familiar?”

She went on without waiting for an answer.

“And in, perhaps, one of the last battles of that particular war, a family living in a border-town got invaded.” Romanoff lifted one shoulder. “Nobody knows who, exactly. But they did. And in the confusion, and madness, one teenage boy got separated from his parents.”

“Stop,” whispered Sharon.

“Borders were re-established by the soldiers,” said Romanoff, ignoring Sharon. “One boy was in a foreign country, away from his family. He left the border-town and headed for the city. He then got a job moving crates in a factory, met a sweet girl, got married, and had two children. The son grew up to a job in a university. The daughter, the second child, arrived in the Academy, stuck through it, and got a job as a security detail for a foreign diplomat.”

 _“Enough,”_ said Sharon. “I know this, Romanoff. I lived this. I-”

“Shut up,” said Romanoff calmly. Sharon’s mouth clicked shut. “Now, the girl who got separated from her brother- she grew up, too. And she got into the army, and had a brilliant career; she got high enough, quick enough, that she was the commanding officer of a young man named Steven Rogers.

“And when borders between the East and West opened up five years ago, her letters were addressed to not only her brother, but also his _daughter.”_ Her eyes narrowed. “Who’s in a very dangerous position. There are copies of the letters, printed neatly in the Guild’s records.” She shrugged. “And, a few months back, Steve Rogers waltzes into the Western Kingdom, gets assigned Sharon Carter, and is the reason why an ex-Assassin is sent to the Southern Isles.”

Sharon whirled away, to the kitchen, and pulled out an illegal bottle of moonshine. She took a deep swig, and then stomped back.

“Rogers asked me to set up a meeting with Fury,” she admitted. “Just a couple weeks into his arrival.”

“And you did it?”

“He was asking to talk to all the heads of state.” Sharon exhaled. “But- this isn’t his type of thing, Romanoff. Believe me, my aunt talks, and this guy- well, I’ve seen him. He’s not the kind to spy.”

Romanoff unfolded, standing. “He’s the only link I have to Fury’s death.”

“Give me one good reason why I should believe it _wasn’t you,_ and why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“Because you probably can’t?” She retorted. “Or that I know exactly what sensitive information’s been crossing borders of two countries with centuries of hatred? Or tha-”

“-I’ve always been careful!”

“-you’ve talked about people that you know, places that you’ve, quote-on-quote _visited,_ and a hundred other details that _look_ innocent if you’re willing to presume it.” Romanoff crossed her arms. “You think the King will, if you anger him? -And be sure, if you try to bring me down, you and your family are not going to survive the fallout.”

Sharon closed her eyes. Caught in a landslide with a waterfall at your back, what did you do?

Jump, of course- one you might survive, while the other was sure death.

“What do you need?”

Romanoff smiled sharply. “Just a few hours.”

…

Natalia could not remember her parents.

She had never been able to. Yelena, with her cold hands and sharp nails, had been older when Ivan had taken her- she remembered a carriage crash, her mother’s lullabies, her brother’s freckles. Natalia had nothing. No past, no future; just the knife in her palms and promises she wrote out in her blood.

Almost twenty years later, she had followed a trick-shot archer with a longbow and callused hands. She had called herself Natasha, because she could not bear living with Ivan’s name for her. She had dug her fingers into hard, deep work, and thought that, if it was not glamorous, if it was not kind- well. She was not a kind person, but she was working towards it. She was learning mercy, and right, and softness.

For every day after, she wondered what it would be like to go looking for her family. A round-faced father, sharp-boned mother; a sister with her hair and brother with her eyes. A hearth kept warm and a position won by nothing more than the blood in her veins.

But what if it wasn’t there? If her family had given her away? If her parents had died?

Natalia had no need for love. She had no need for family. She could live with what she was doing, and that was enough.

(Natalia, Natalia, Natalia-)

(What about Natasha, darling orphan child? What about Natasha Romanoff, built out of the ashes of Natalia Romanova?)

…

**Interlude I:**

_In an old world, in an old time, a young boy stared out at his father and screamed,_ I am a monster.

 _His father did not say_ no.

…

Two days later, Natasha was draped in dark blue silk. Her hair was the same chestnut brown, but her figure and face were padded with flesh-colored fat; if anyone saw her they would not notice her.

It was more useful to use glamours, perhaps, but Natasha was fresh out of sorcerer-helpers. The Guild didn’t have many, and never had; sorcerers tended to be outcasts, in general. City life didn’t agree with them.

The ball was a celebration of some religious holiday that people barely remembered. Natasha was glad for the spectacle, though- Steve Rogers would be there, along with his coterie of people.

Natasha arrived, just a few minutes past the stated time on the invitation.

(There was a young woman a few miles away, fast asleep. The wine she’d drank that morning had been treated with poppies, and Natasha had taken her invitation and run.)

Inside, she grabbed a flute of champagne, and retreated to a corner. Without an escort, and alone- dressed like this, she had best not make an impression on anyone who wasn’t Rogers.

And, there he was- right on time.

_Impressive._

He was strongly built. The pale blonde hair and blue eyes looked exotic in the dark-haired, dark-eyed court. Western people tended to be short, as well, and Rogers was over six feet tall, and _broad._

She began to move, sidling along the edges to talk to him, when-

_Oh fucking shit of a-_

Yelena stood, not five feet from her; back facing Natasha. She was laughing at what one man was saying, pressing closer to him. Her long, white-blonde hair was woven with sapphires, and she looked like a cool, untouchable goddess.

Natasha breathed deep, and moved forwards. She slid past Yelena and the man with ease, and did not look back. It was over in a matter of seconds.

“Would you care for this dance?” She asked Rogers brightly.

He blinked, and she could see the refusal already forming on his lips: polite, but a no, nonetheless.

She could not have that.

“Oh, I insist!” She chirped, and dragged him forwards.

Rogers looked slightly startled. This close, Natasha could understand Carter’s statement: _this isn’t his thing._ Perhaps the disingenuity was just a facade- but if it was, it was masterful.

“General Steven Grant Rogers, of the 107th?”

He went even more rigid. “Yes, ma’am. What exactly-”

“General,” said Natasha, letting her voice go cool and crisp, “I regret to inform you that you are in immediate danger. I’ve been given the unenviable task of being your bodyguard, and require your cooperation if either of us are to get out of this alive.”

“I don’t understand.”

“ _Laugh,”_ hissed Natasha. She smiled brightly and whirled away, spinning back. “I just said something funny, General, _laugh.”_

He smiled slowly, awkwardly. Natasha bit back curses and drew him away from the middle, to the edge; farther from where she’d last seen Yelena.

“I’m a bit tired,” she told him loudly, half-bumping into the couple next to them. “Let’s sit down.”

He escorted her a little farther, and Natasha glanced back at the dancers, once; timed it to a swell of music and the flare of women’s skirts-

-tripped over her feet-

-Rogers bent forwards-

-she yanked her foot around his calf, pulled him off balance, and _yanked_ him into a side corridor.

He didn’t even have time to yelp before she’d untangled herself and began to move into the corridor.

“Wait!” He called, and she cursed under her breath.

“Has no one ever taught you to _be quiet?”_ She hissed at him.

He looked slightly chastened, but also- angry. There was something seething in him, and she thought she recognized it: the desire to bury yourself in something so deeply there was no coming out. The desire to dig your head into the sand.

Natasha softened, slightly. “I am sorry for the inconvenience, General. But time is of the essence.”

If Yelena was there, and she was not hiding herself, then the Guild was in on it. Natasha had broken Yelena’s neck in front of five other men, and Nick Fury had been there while she did it. He would have put it on record. If Yelena was showing her face and the Guild was doing nothing, then she’d have to assume the entire organization was in on it.

Which begged the question _why now._ Why, just days after Fury’s death, was Natasha seeing Yelena? Natasha had one person linking it all together, and while the ball had been, just hours previous, a recon, now it was either a rescue, a murder, or a mix of both, depending on Rogers’ answers.

She’d asked Carter for an hour’s time, to talk to Rogers.

Too bad that wasn’t going to work.

“I’ll want an explanation, when we settle down,” said Rogers, and then began following her easily.

Natasha nodded coolly. She led him in the maze-like palace, a layout she’d drilled into her mind before, deeper and deeper until they were well past the dungeon levels. It was cool, and damp, when she finally whispered, “Stop,” and lit a match.

She hadn’t forgotten.

A few years back, she’d needed a base inside the castle itself, and picked out this one- easily escapable, and well-hidden. Bit of a long walk, but manageable. And, best of all, off the record.

“Where are we?” Asked Rogers.

Natasha stepped back, and nodded casually to a table. “Take a seat, General. We’re underneath the castle. Nobody knows we’re here, I assure you- you’re completely safe.”

“I prefer to stand,” he growled. “Now, care to tell me what that was all about?”

“My name is Natasha Romanoff,” she said. “And I was not aware that you were in danger, General, until I arrived at the ball. You were a secondary target; I was only there for some reconnaissance. That was until I saw Yelena Belova, a woman who was supposedly killed last year, and was responsible for Master Assassin Nicholas Fury’s murder a few days ago.”

His eyes narrowed. “I haven’t heard the name.”

“You wouldn’t be expected to.” Natasha leaned forward. “I’ve no idea why, General, she is here.  However, I _was_ there when Fury was assassinated, and his last words- not to me, General, to the world- were to tell me to seek you out.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Natasha smiled grimly. “You came to this country a few months ago, am I correct?”

“Yes, but-”

“And you spoke to Fury within a week.”

“Is this a rescue or an interrogation?” He asked tersely.

“Let’s call it a bit of both,” said Natasha. “No- General, believe me, there is information here that is needed to keep this peninsula secure, and to keep _you_ safe. Believe me, I would not do this if I had a choice.”

“Am I even in _danger?”_

Natasha folded her arms. “I killed Belova last year, General. With my own hands. And now, she is alive, and well. If I knew how- I might know what is being planned. Now, the only thing I _do_ know is that Fury was a thorn in the King’s side, and that loyal members of the Guild have not arrested a woman that was killed in front of them less than a year previous. _You_ are the only thing linking it all, and she would be a fool to not know this as well. To stop her- I need information.”

He swallowed. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for, Romanoff. I did talk to Fury, yes, but that was because I had a letter given to my safekeeping addressed to him.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“King Anthony.”

“What?” She felt surprised. And- irritable. “Anthony? _Anthony Stark?”_

“Or anyone who had access to my pack, and his seal,” said Rogers.

Natasha leaned back. “Fine. Did Fury tell you anything?”

“No. He read it, and walked away. Looked the same as ever, I suppose.”

Damn Nick’s poker face. And Rogers’ lack of skill in reading people. And _her_ for getting caught in this mess.

“Alright, General.” Natasha looked at him critically. “I’ve a few disguises we can don, so we can escape.” She ran a hand over the dusty underside of the table and released a hidden catch. The false bottom sprung open, and she picked out a dark glass bottle.

She tossed it to him.

“What is it?” He asked, catching it.

“Dye.”

His head snapped up. “For…”

“Your _hair,_ General,” she snapped. “It’s a bit distinctive, wouldn’t you say?”

“You kidnapped me,” he pointed out mildly.

Natasha pursed her lips. “General Rogers-”

“-and please stop calling me _General.”_ His lips twisted on the word like it was a curse; his large shoulders hunched slightly.

“...that is your title.”

“My title’s Captain,” said Rogers. “I was never a- a- General. I’d never… people just assumed, here. I’m sick of it.”

She inclined her head, biting back the instinctive surprise. “Be glad for it. If it comes out you are no higher in the army than a common-born peasant can achieve… the insult that the King might take to that could start wars.” Natasha glanced back. “If you’re ready, Captain?”

He took the shallow bowl she offered him and grimaced good-naturedly. “Yes. What are you doing?”

“We will leave through the north gate,” she told him, and reached for the seam right beneath her spine, where the silk had been attached over rough cotton. “To do so without calling for attention, I’m a peasant, and you will be a soldier.”

“I already am one,” he pointed out wryly.

“A lower-ranked one, then,” she said.

Rogers snorted and angled himself so he couldn’t see her, and busied himself with dying his hair. Natasha cut out three underskirts and the silk wrapping of her corset, folding the cloth into a neat bundle that she shoved under a pile of moldy food.

Less than an hour later, they were climbing up from the castle when Natasha sensed something- a scream, perhaps, that was muffled, or maybe just the preternatural silence of a castle that should have been terribly cheerful.

Her eyes narrowed and she checked, compulsively, the little mirrors embedded in the walls. It took her some time, too, to identify their tail- he was good. Tall, though perhaps an inch shorter than Rogers; dark hair, grim countenance.

_Murderer._

Natasha inhaled soundlessly when she recognized that walk. And that slow tilt of the head, the predatory sharpness that didn’t belong to any human.

“We’ve a tail,” she told Rogers. He looked startled for an instant, and then she continued: “He’ll be more dangerous than any man you’ve ever seen, Rogers. He won’t be stopped by injury, I swear; kill him. And do not hesitate.”

He nodded, and they continued. Natasha led them through a labyrinth, making sure they worked with the crowd at all times. The Guild had not yet shown their hand, and she would take full advantage of that fact as long as she could. If they wouldn’t take her in a crowded street, then she would stick to crowded streets.

They slipped out the side gate along with a hundred other people, cutting across two alleys and above a low-hanging house until they were close enough to her safe house.

Natasha slipped into the gap between two buildings- here, in this part of town, houses were older, less large gaps and hard angles and more sloping edges, curving, narrow streets. This safe house was a basement.

Doors still ringed the narrow alley. Natasha knelt at the foot of one and drew a sharp stiletto- the blade was thin enough to jimmy the lock. It was less proper basement and more grate between street and building.

She yanked open the lock and growled at the rusted metal. It took two kicks to get the whole thing to fall apart. She slipped into the gap immediately after.

Rogers followed her. “What’s the plan, Agent Romanoff?”

“Call me Natasha.” She exhaled sharply and dropped against the wall, closing her eyes. “We’ll sleep, Captain. And then we’ll get out of this godforsaken city. Hopefully you’ll be back home soon enough.”

Rogers didn’t answer for a moment, the pause long enough for her to open her eyes and look at him, look _properly-_ and then there was nothing there; the emotion weighting his shoulders disappearing as quick as it had come.

“Looking forward to it. And, Natasha? Call me Steve.”

She nodded. A moment later he, too, sank against the wall and settled against it in an attempt to sleep. To the gentle rasp of cloth against stone, Natasha fell asleep.

…

She awoke to the faint smell of smoke.

 _Something is wrong._ Her hands swept through the air, trying to push back the fog that threatened to sink over her thoughts, and in a moment of clarity she knew what was happening.

“Get up!” She barked, grabbing the pack full of knives from the table and shoving the table forwards, so it provided some cover.

Rogers twitched. By the time he woke properly there would be nothing for him to wake up _to,_ she thought half-hysterically, and in a fit of sheer stupidity tried to drag him behind the makeshift barricade as well.

It went about as well as one could expect: she was not a large woman, and Rogers was both large and made up almost entirely of muscles. But the bomb that blew was not a shrapnel one, and in a flash Rogers was awake, drawing breath in with a great shuddering gasp and wrapping around her in a single, flowing move.

Natasha let her muscles go slack under him. When the wood splinters stopped raining down on them, she waited a count of four. And _sprang_ up, forcing Rogers down and herself forwards, two knives in hand and nothing but rage as armor.

_I made this._

The murderer-assassin had followed them. She’d been so _stupid,_ believing in her own intelligence and tracking skills and never thinking that anyone would actually be better than her. And she knew this assassin, knew him well.

Once upon a time, the assassin had held a knife to her throat and said, _emotion is weakness._

Natasha felt her hair become a whirlwind, her hands bladed as her knives, her eyes harden; and she thought, _it is not_ my _weakness._

He met her knives with a sword that glittered devilish black. Natasha swung, twisted, let momentum carry her forward for a half-breath before throwing herself back. In the space between heartbeats, she slashed at his briefly unprotected throat. It opened a red gash on the pale skin but didn’t do much more; there hadn’t been much force attached to it.

And he turned; she followed without hesitation and met a flying fist to her face that threw her back, spine and skull slamming into the brick wall with a dull thunk, right next to the metal grate.

Her knives skittered away.

The Winter Soldier stepped forwards into the streetlight, hands steady and eyes empty. He was a machine, a tool dead as his sword, and she would die here under him because she’d been a self-confident, arrogant idiot.

_“Bucky?”_

She gasped, drawing much-needed air into her lungs, as the Winter Soldier half-turned to meet Rogers’ unexpected arrival. Something seemed to- almost- flash across his face: emotion, if he was human enough to feel such things. Rogers’ voice shook as he repeated the word, lilting upwards to form a question.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” The Soldier asked, but there was something in his eyes, something in his voice, and Natasha thought, _now._

The rusted metal of the grate detached easily enough when she yanked hard, and she flung herself forwards at just the right angle to slice the sharp end across the meat of his shoulder, where it would hinder his sword-arm most. He took the hit and stumbled, slightly, and then shot Rogers another nameless, confusion-ridden look and fled.

Natasha breathed in, breathed out, and turned to Rogers.

“I don’t care what you’re feeling,” she said, “but I need to know what’s going on, _right now.”_

…

In the catacombs under the city, Natasha tended to Rogers.

There were small cuts and bruises littering his entire frame. But he had been lucky in the sort of manner that spoke to sheer happenstance; the largest pieces had missed his body and the only injury that might truly plague him was not on either leg or on his sword-arm.

“What kind of a bomb was-” the rest of his sentence ended in a hiss as she pulled string through the meat of his calf.

“It doesn’t have a name like you’d imagine,” she said, “though those in the profession call it a sleeper bomb. It starts out by emitting gas that tends to lull people into sleep, and then it explodes- not terribly powerful, but people rarely have any defense when they’re asleep. It’s rather effective.”

She tied off the last of the stitches. Rogers shifted slightly, and Natasha pressed his shoulder back.

“Roge- _Steve-_ we need to stay calm. A great number of people want us _dead,_ if you haven’t remembered, and we won’t get through this alive if we’re not smart.”

“They have _Bucky,”_ he forced through clenched teeth. “I’m not resting until we get him back.”

Natasha didn’t bother to tell him that seeing a man under a streetlamp in the middle of a sword-fight wasn’t the best identifier. Steve had been just recovering from a shock, as well; likely any man who was of some height and dark-haired would have looked like his best friend.

“You won’t be any help to him dead,” she said bluntly, and got off the floor. “Anyways. We won’t be sitting here for much longer. There’s one place that’ll have information on who this Bucky is, and what _we’re_ doing with him. If you’re willing to be a tad bit more patient, we can get this information without anyone dying, or even getting hurt.”

Steve lifted eyes that were a pure, fire-lit blue. Natasha arched an eyebrow and extended a hand.

He took it.

…

Everything was white.

Like snow, and ice, and other cold, cold things. She was nothing but a marble statue in a snowstorm, fissures traveling over stone skin and threatening to break her in half.

Ivan was alive. She could have accepted that- she might have disappeared for however long it took to kill him again and ensure he remained dead, but still accepted it.

But that wasn’t all: there were people in the Guild who were and always had been loyal to Alexander Pierce, people who swore to serve Fury and then turned their backs; people Natasha knew and met and loved. And in the name of the Guild that Fury had formed and Natasha had served, they killed innocents. Pierce’s men tortured those who stood in their way and nobody dared to stop them until Fury tried and got an arrow to the chest for his pains.

In black, beautiful script, there it was:

_Fury will die tonight._

 -  _ _From the hand of the King, Alexander Pierce.__

Dated the night before Nick died.

She’d served these people. Natasha had left Ivan and thought it a penance, doing the work of the living instead of the dead. She’d found comfort in the Guild’s cold, impersonal laws: nobody was above them.

And here was the proof that it’d all been a lie.

Slowly, distantly, she heard the scuffle of a fight. Her fingers twitched on the paper.

Her eyes flicked to the side as wood showered down on her: instinct had her roll away when her muscles still did not feel like anything more than water. A moment later she felt Rogers’- Steve’s- hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm.

“Get out of here,” he ordered. “Go. Hide. You’re in no shape to fight.”

Natasha looked away. Her eyes fell on Bucky- the Winter Soldier- whatever- who was out cold, blood seeping from a cut on his temple. Steve went to pick him up, hoisting him on his back, and Natasha found the presence of mind to ask, “And you?”

“Me?”

“You won’t get far with him,” she said, gesturing to his burden. “Not if- not if these documents are correct.”

“I have to try,” he said sharply.

She twitched. Her world was here, in these walls. She’d abandoned a life and then built another one and it hadn’t made an iota of difference. Betrayals like these ought to draw blood, she thought, betrayals like these ought to result in death.

Natasha’d always known that her life wasn’t worth much, in the great balance of things. Her death would be worth even less. She could give up her blood to these stones that had once sheltered her. She _should_ give up her blood to these stones.

But Steve Rogers stood before her, hair still glinting with strands of gold under his dark dye. On his back was a man that Steve named brother and more; that he was willing to die for. And he wasn’t asking her for anything: just to leave, to hide, to survive.

She breathed deep, and got up. Papers scattered everywhere. Her legs felt numb for a moment, and then she felt something suddenly crack away inside her chest like a twig, leaking something so hot into her muscles it burned.

_Anger._

“Not alone.” She stepped forwards, picking up scattered knives across the floor. “You won’t get far alone, not when you know nothing of these halls. But you’re not alone.”

“I won’t ask it of you.”

“Thank me later,” she said, and took a torch from a wall sconce, and set fire to all the papers.

…

On the way out, Natasha saw a flicker of hair so pale it was like ice.

Her knives slashed into two more attackers, forcing them away, and swung smoothly to keep the majority of attackers from Steve. Her heart pounded in her chest, so hard it ached.

“Enough,” said a voice that was even and calm; a voice the resonated in her nightmares and she’d thought dead.

Ivan Petrovich stepped forwards. His face was a little older, wearier; but the cold, sharp lines were unchanged. His eyes were a pale shade of blue that still pierced through her shields with ease.

“Natalya,” he said, warmth suffusing his voice. “Oh, beautiful girl, you’ve done so brilliantly. Come on now, drop your weapons. This is getting ridiculous.”

She blinked. Her muscles felt heavy, and her eyes drooped; Ivan’s power had always been in his voice. But Natasha had trained against him for an entire childhood. If she could not win against him, then Ivan could not beat her, either.

“Call me whatever name you wish,” she said. “But you’re not my father. Don’t pretend to be so. And I’ll kill you, I swear to it: I’ve done it once before, and I’ll do it as many times as needed for it to _stick._ Stay back and I won’t bury a knife in your throat, do you hear me?”

“And who is your father, little Natalya? Do you wish to know?”

“Yes,” Natasha said fiercely, fierce enough to take him back. “But not from _you.”_

She looked around, and wanted to swallow tightly: too many people, too fast, everything falling apart because of her rage. There was little enough chance of surviving, she knew.

_You are no soldier. You are the knife in the dark. You are the whisper that kills._

_Your strength is not in your knives, Natalya, it is in your words. So hear this-_

“Tell me, Ivan, did you fear me?”

Steve hissed out something that might have been a question if he hadn’t been panting for breath. Natasha straightened her back and asked him to trust her silently.

“I killed you. I didn’t hesitate. I’ve burned you and a hundred other men alive, I’ve broken kingdoms. When you saw me, _did you fear me?”_

Ivan’s face twisted with an emotion that she was surprised to be able to read: true, pure fury. His hands shifted, pulling glittering white strands from the air. Natasha sank into a proper stance and said, “You should have.”

“I _should have_ killed you,” he replied, eyes shining mad-white. “I should have struck the air from your lungs when I met you, you idiotic _girl,_ and I wouldn’t have hesitated if I’d known you’d grow up a traitor!”

A whisper of movement from her back, and Natasha felt a jolt of shock as Steve bit out a cry- she dropped and rolled to the side, and a dark-blurred shadow leapt forwards, just as Ivan released the magic he’d pulled on.

It hit the Soldier in a concentrated surge and he was thrown backwards, hard enough that the wall he hit crumbled. Natasha grabbed Steve with one hand and he scooped Bucky up with the next; with one last look backwards, they fled.

…

Natasha tossed branches onto the fire and scuffed a boot against the ashes of the grass. It was a cool night; muggy with the promise of the rain and almost too heavy to breathe.

“Steve,” she said, reaching out to take his shoulder before thinking better of it. Instead, she said, again, “Come on. We won’t be able to take another rest like this for much longer. You need to eat and-”

“He can’t eat.”

She broke off. Steve hadn’t looked at her the whole time they’d run, head bowed and averted as if he was looking at something shameful. It made her stomach curdle and head throb, made words rise in her chest that were defensive and cruel and bitter.

“We’ll figure it out,” she told him, instead of saying _get over yourself._ “But in the meantime, you won’t be doing anyone any favors by collapsing. Someone needs to run, if it comes down to it. He’s your _friend,_ Rogers, he’ll forgive you for taking care of yourself.”

“Who knows?” He asked lowly, and then his eyes met hers, and she realized that it wasn’t for anger that he’d avoided looking at her- or at least not anger at _her,_ but rather anger at himself. “Who knows what they did to him? I- I was his captain. I should have stayed and found him when he fell- I didn’t. It’s on me, what’s happened. And he probably won’t ever forgive me. _Bucky_ probably won’t-” Steve choked, head bending to brush his knees, and his shoulders began to tremble with great wracking shudders.

Natasha was no good with this kind of grief. She stood helplessly, waiting for him to gather himself; when all he did was hunch inwards even tighter, she reached forwards and took his sleeve in her hands.

“Listen to me. _Listen._ I know what they do, what people like Ivan do to innocents. I know. But your- Bucky is stronger than them. He’ll break out of it.” She waited until Steve was looking at her to continue. “They took me when I was- a baby. And they brainwashed me. And they tried to make me their weapon, and I told them _no, you can’t._ They couldn’t break me, not even when that was all I knew. You think Bucky couldn’t do that? You think he’s not strong enough?”

“He’s the strongest man I know,” Steve said raggedly. His hand brushed over Bucky’s dark hair, soft as a raven’s wing, and Natasha thought, _oh._

A friend’s love; a brother’s love; a partner’s love.

She let go of his sleeve and felt her shoulders twitch inwards; consciously, firmly, Natasha straightened them.

“Eat,” she ordered. “And sleep. I’ll take the first watch. If we’re lucky we can reach the Eastern Plains in a fortnight’s time. We’ll need the rest.”

Steve did so, eyes not moving from Bucky’s. He looked so young and so tired. His large frame was too big for the delicacy of his emotions. Natasha stomped away from them after some time, too tired for this kind of love- too tired to see or revel in this quiet, grieving sort of happiness.

Steve might have lost his lover, but he’d had a country’s unflinching support, and he’d not gotten Bucky _back._

Natasha had the knives in her fists and the steel in her spine and nothing, not an ounce, not an iota more.

Some mornings, it felt like enough. And on others it felt like nothing. On the worst, it felt like something stolen, this righteousness, this belief; on the worst, it felt like she might crumble under the weight of her sins.

But she hadn’t yet. And she wouldn’t: not until she’d paid what she could. Her death would mean something, even if her life meant nothing.

 _That,_ she thought, staring up at cold stars, a lump in her throat and weight across her chest, _that I promise._

…


End file.
